The coronation of Henry IV, on October 13th, 1399, as depicted in an edition of Jean Froissart’s Chroniques published circa 1470-1472. Froissart (?1335-1404/10) was a Belgian chronicler and contemporary of Henry who spent several years in England, initially in the service of Philippa of Hainault, Edward III’s queen. By 1399, Edward’s grandson and successor, Richard II, had made himself so wealthy at others’ expense and so deeply unpopular, that he was pushed off the throne with relative ease by his cousin Henry IV, another of Edward’s grandsons, who required only a few hundred men for the purpose. William Shakespeare dramatised John of Gaunt, Henry’s father, bewailing the state of the nation: see ‘This England’.
Part 1 of 2
THE procession entered the church about nine o’clock. In the middle of the church was erected a scaffold covered with crimson cloth, in the centre of which was the royal throne of cloth of gold. When the duke entered the church, he seated himself on the throne, and was thus in regal state, except having the crown on his head. The Archbishop of Canterbury proclaimed from the four corners of the scaffold how God had given them a man for their lord and sovereign, and then asked the people if they were consenting parties to his being consecrated and crowned King, upon which the people unanimously shouted “Ay,” and held up their hands, promising fealty and homage.
The duke* then descended from the throne and advanced to the altar to be consecrated. Two archbishops and ten bishops performed the ceremony. He was stripped of all his royal state before the altar, naked to his shirt, and was then anointed and consecrated at six places: i.e. on the head, the breast, the two shoulders, before and behind; on the back and hands.
* Froissart acknowledges that Henry is at this stage still Duke of Lancaster, and not yet ‘the King’.
Précis
In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, was crowned Henry IV of England at Westminster Abbey. Chronicler Jean Froissart recorded the scene as Henry left his Palace and went to the Abbey, where he was proclaimed before the people, who acknowledged him as their lord, then stripped of his robes and anointed by the clergy. (54 / 60 words)
Part Two
Edward ‘Ned’ Alleyn (1566-1626), a major figure in Elizabethan theatre and founder of the College of God’s Gift in Dulwich, owned this portrait of Henry IV among twenty-six royal portraits he gathered between 1618 and 1620. It was not taken from life, but apparently based on engravings in Henry Holland’s Baziliωlogia: A Booke of Kings, published in 1618. Henry owed his crown to the hard campaigning of the Percy family of Northumberland, but he subsequently disappointed them and in 1403 was forced to nip the Percy Rebellion in the bud. The execution two years later of the pro-Percy Archbishop of York, Richard Scrope, marked a sudden and dramatic decline in Henry’s health, and he died aged 46, after barely fourteen years as king, in 1413.
A bonnet was then placed on his head, and while this was being done, the clergy chanted the litany, or the service that is performed to hallow a font. The King was now dressed in a churchman’s clothes, like a deacon; and they put on him shoes of crimson velvet, after the manner of a prelate. Then they added spurs with a point but no rowel; and the sword of justice was drawn, blessed and delivered to the King, who put it again into the scabbard, when the Archbishop of Canterbury girded it about him.
The crown of Saint Edward, which is arched over like a cross, was next brought and blessed, and placed by the Archbishop on the King’s head. When mass was over, the King left the church, and returned to the palace, in the same state as before.
* Now Froissart calls Henry ‘king’, because he had been anointed after the manner of the Kings of Israel and Judah, though not yet formally crowned.
Précis
After his anointing, Henry was dressed in fine robes suitable for his coronation in the Abbey. To these, a knight’s spurs were added, and he was girt with a sword, blessed as a symbol of Justice. Then the crown of St Edward was set on his head, before Mass was sung and the new King returned to the Palace. (59 / 60 words)
